Mission critical systems include systems whose availability is vital to the accomplishment of a particular task or goal, such as medical/clinical systems, e.g. medical imaging systems, security systems, such as security screening systems, safety/security/monitoring systems, such as air traffic control systems, communications systems, data processing systems, manufacturing systems, etc.
Maintaining mission critical systems is a complex task. Often, such systems must be taken off line or out of production in order to perform maintenance, such as diagnostics, updates, upgrades, repairs or general upkeep, such as calibration. Where the particular maintenance process requires a significant amount of time to complete, this downtime represents, at the very least, an inconvenience to the users of those systems, and, in many cases, an unacceptable loss of availability of the system. Further, often maintenance processes encounter or reveal unexpected problems which may exacerbate the length of time that the system is unavailable.
In particular, such systems share the common characteristics of complexity, high cost, such as acquisition costs and/or resource/operating costs, and significant loss potential when they are unavailable. The complexity of these systems increases the necessity of maintenance, i.e. necessity of improvements or the likelihood of failure, makes such maintenance procedures non-trivial and increases the likelihood that longer periods of downtime will be needed for the particular procedure as well as increases the likelihood of downtime due to unexpected problems. For example, updates or upgrades to the operating software of a medical imaging device further requires ensuring the device is properly calibrated and functioning correctly to ensure the diagnostic reliability of the device.
Further, the potential for loss if the system were to be unavailable, e.g. the opportunity costs, such as lost revenue in a manufacturing environment, lost diagnostic capability or lost screening capability, can be significant for these devices, and in most cases, unacceptable. For example, if a security screening device fails in an airport, lost capacity or the reliance on alternative, but less reliable, screening methods may result in passenger delays and/or lessened security. Failure of a medical imaging device may delay treatment of life-threatening conditions.
In addition, the high acquisition cost and/or high operating resource costs, such as physical space requirements and/or geographic dispersion, operator cost, etc., of these systems makes providing redundancy impractical. Accordingly, providing a “back-up” system is typically not an option but for the most sensitive and urgent applications. Medical imaging devices, such as MRI scanners, security screening devices, such as explosives detectors, etc., are typically very expensive and very large devices. Providing redundant “back-up” systems to be used in case of the need for maintenance of the primary system would represent both a significant cost burden and a burden on physical space requirements in already-overcrowded airports or hospitals, etc. Further, for such expensive equipment, a back-up system would represent a significant waste of resources or opportunity cost, i.e. waste of a system which could otherwise be used to reduce wait times, increase revenues, etc. However, putting the “back-up” system into production then introduces the same maintenance/unavailability problems discussed above for the original as well as additional systems.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method of reducing the amount of time that a mission-critical system is unavailable while maintenance procedures are performed.